Pansexual girl and accidental activist

Tag Archives: child sexual abuse

I’m not really a gamer, at least, not by the standards of most hardcore gamers. My NES was the most significant and best remembered gift I ever received as a child, a few years after it was released. My favorite memories of my father, from an otherwise strained and strange relationship, come from sitting together on the floor, playing marathon games of the original Super Mario Bros., with a little Duck Hunt thrown in, to break things up a bit. I’ve played and loved everything from the original computer-lab version of The Oregon Trail, to the Resident Evil on the original PlayStation. I was poor, though, and struggling to keep up a family, so I didn’t even have home internet access until 2008. I was nearly thirty, by then, and soon to become disabled, just as I was pulling myself out of poverty. So, I never got into PC games, or MMORPGs. I never learned the keyboard controls, or what the fuck ‘tanking’ is. I still enjoy the hell out of some old-school console games, or some quest-type games like Machinarium, but that’s about it. So, I hesitate to call myself a ‘Gamer,’ because I’ve seen what kind of insults come at women who actually are capital-G Gamers. The ones who have played MMOs since they were created. The ones who develop games for others to play. I’m already a woman, disabled, and a feminist, so I simply didn’t want to give them any more reasons to come after me.

I’m pretty well-versed, though, on Gamergate. As a feminist – hell, as a woman who expresses opinions online – it’s pretty relevant to me. So, I read up on it. It took quite a long time, and a bit of digging, to find all the relevant posts and counterposts, the incoherent video rages of those involved, the endless campaigns of harassment and abuse directed at women who didn’t do a single thing to deserve any of it. One was stalked by her abuser. One made some videos about problematic aspects of video games. Several others spoke out against the harassment and blatant abuse directed towards others. One of those was Sarah Nyberg. I had no idea who Sarah was, until someone online called me by her name, one day, in the midst of what might loosely be called a debate. I was pointing out that this guy was resorting to some really heinous tactics, such as using ableist, racist, and misogynist slurs, and saying I “needed to be raped, to be put in [my] place,” instead of using sound logical arguments, based in fact and reality. After he tossed a few more awful threats and abusive slurs my way, I told him I refused to continue the conversation, unless he stopped being abusive and bigoted in his language.

Since I was being compared to her, and even being labeled with her name, I thought I’d look her up. After all, anyone with whom I was being compared, because I refused to take abuse and argue with a juvenile fuckwit, was probably someone I wanted to know. I read up on all the horrors they visited on her, all the abuse they’re still throwing at her, and followed her on one social media platform. Unsurprisingly, I discovered a warm, witty, engaging woman. Someone who seemed to share most of my values. I engaged in a little back-and-forth with her, online.

Then, the DMs. The gators who urgently needed to tell me the SHOCKING! TRUTH! that Sarah was a pedophile. On its face, it seemed eerily similar to pretty much any reactionary smear tactic, such as the recent CMP smear on Planned Parenthood, or the Breitbart smear of journalist Shaun King. All flash, no substance, and a whole lot of vile verbal sewage.

I’ve seen the actual, un-edited transcripts of the conversations from which they carefully culled their bullshit accusations. And I’m still fucking furious.

Let me be as clear as humanly possible:

UNFUCK YOU, GG ASSHOLES.

See, I was the victim of an actual pedophile. I was molested for five years by my stepfather. Five years of my childhood and adolescence that I will never get back, never be able to remember without pain, never be able to forget. Five years of being objectified and assaulted and abused by an adult who damned well knew better. I have lived with the after-effects of that abuse for over two decades. The gaslighting by family. The betrayal of a mother for whom money was more important. The whole extended family who didn’t believe me, either of the times I tried to tell, the failure of the responsible adults in my life to protect and defend me, and have my back when I mustered the strength to finally speak out. Being branded as “manic depressive,” and a “pathological liar,” by people who were not mental health professionals, and only using it as a smear tactic. Being harangued by other family members to “repair the relationship” with my mother, because she was the only one I’d ever get, in spite of the fact that she was the one who turned her back on me, in spite of the fact that she was the one who painted me as the villain to every single person from whom I may have received support.

I lived with this, virtually alone in the knowledge of what he’d done to me, what he’d taken from me, for seventeen years. I suffered secondary victimization on several levels. I spent years in therapy, and years researching the effects of child sexual abuse, to develop coping strategies for all of the lingering effects. I was doing pretty okay. It wasn’t tearing me apart, like it had in those earlier years.

I lived with this for seventeen years…until he molested a very young relative. Police and social workers got involved. When they asked the adults in the child’s life if the man had a history of molesting children, they were pointed in my direction. I gave a statement, and they offered to press charges against him for what he did to me, too.

That was three years ago. Three years ago, every single carefully cultivated scab was ripped right off. Every single emotional tripwire was restrung, just as tight as they’d ever been. And we’re still awaiting that bastard’s trial.

THAT is what pedophilia does. And consensual age play between adults IS. NOT. PEDOPHILIA. You useless fucking fecal stains.

WORDS.

MEAN.

THINGS.

You don’t get to dredge up a word like pedophilia, and use it to smear someone who isn’t one. You don’t get to use my personal hell, and the deeply personal suffering of roughly one quarter of the population, as a smear tactic in your pathetic little imaginary war to save video games from teh upstart wimminz. You don’t care about abused children. You don’t care about pedophilia. You don’t give any fucks at all about the damage you have done, or continue to do, with your endless, senseless abuse.

You can take your mindless, childish, incoherent, bullshit outrage, and shove it straight up your greasy, grimy, pasty, pathetic asses.

Nobody was ever coming for your stupid fucking epeens. Nobody was destroying gaming. Pointing out a problem with a thing does not equal hating the thing, or trying to destroy it. If you can’t grok that, you need to go back to grammar school and learn a few things.

And I hope you never have a not-solo orgasm in the entire remainder of your sad little lives. I hope your Cheetos all taste like chalk, and your Mountain Dew like dish soap. I hope all your bacon burns, and all your Hot Pockets sear your slimy fucking tongues. I hope you step on a Lego every time you go to steal mom’s cold cream, and that you accidentally grab Gojo, instead. I hope your PC crashes in the middle of every future raid. And I hope that people mock you for it until you cry into your peach fuzz neckbeards. If there was such a thing as hell, there’d be a special place in it for someone so low, so utterly without remorse, as to use such a real and horrific pain of millions to smear someone who isn’t guilty of anything but calling you out on your bullshit, you fragile, inadequate little manbabies.

Shame on you. Shame on you, forever. If you ever grow up, and learn the depth of the awfulness of what you’ve done to so many, I hope you feel that shame until you die. I hope it never lets you get another decent night’s sleep. I hope you suffer tenfold for every pain you’ve inflicted on others. Because you deserve nothing less.

I have recently started spending an inordinate amount of time on Twitter. A year ago, I would have believed that to be a waste of time. A year ago, I was uninformed.

Twitter, largely thanks to the efforts of Black Lives Matter activists like Johnetta Elzie, DeRay Mckesson and Zellie Imani, has become the active, vibrant, effective hub of social change. It’s strange to say, but I sometimes feel like I didn’t really grow up, didn’t really mature in my own feminism, until I found Twitter. Sure, I sort of understood my own white privilege, but I didn’t really know even a third of the racial history of this country. I believed in intersectionality, but I had not quite internalized it.

Twitter changed that, 140 characters at a time. Not to mention all the links to mind-blowing, mind-expanding studies and articles, op-ed pieces and blog entries. It also introduced me to a host of amazing people who are doing some very difficult, often thankless, sometimes risky even to the point of possible death, activism work.

Aside from the cat pics and joke memes (which, let’s be clear, I enjoy more than I should), Twitter has mostly been a feeling of community I’ve missed for a long time. It has given me something I thought I’d lost, before: a place to talk about my personal feminism, without feeling like I was constantly under attack. A place to learn from other people, without feeling completely disconnected from the teachers. A place to debate, where the trolls can fairly easily be dismissed (at least, they can for me; I know others’ experiences haven’t been that at all) by the simple click of a mouse.

And there are the question tweets. Mostly, the questions aren’t original. Often, they’re things I’ve seen a million times, and just haven’t bothered to address or answer, for myself. Simple questions, with maybe not-so-simple answers.

Tonight’s simple question, from Feminist Gals an account created mostly (from what I can tell) to educate teens and college-aged adults about feminism, was this:

Why do you need feminism?

I responded twice, and I’ll include those answers, here. But there is so much more than I could put into tweets, even if I filled that text field over and over again, all night long. I decided to start a living, updated-as-necessary list of all the reasons why I need feminism.

I need feminism…

…because before I was old enough to legally buy a drink in a bar, I’d been molested for five years, gang raped while on a vacation, abused by two different partners, and roofied and raped at a party where I had one drink.

…because my family didn’t believe I’d been molested.

…because I chose a boy I didn’t really care about, to lose my virginity, so that the grown man who was molesting me wouldn’t take it from me, without my consent.

…because virginity has become so commodified in our culture, I actually believed I would lose value as a human being, as soon as I was no longer a virgin.

…because from the moment I had sex with that sweet boy, I was labelled a slut.

…because my best friend at the time was also gang raped, that night, and blamed me for it. Because she and her friend beat me in a parking lot for not saving her.

…because I was taught to question and doubt the validity of my own lived experiences, by people not believing my accounts of them.

…because of gaslighting.

…because, when I told my boyfriend (at the time) about being raped, he blamed me for it, and immediately explained how he would leave me, if I pulled away from him the next time he tried to kiss me or initiate sex.

…because I was still so unsure of my own value as a human being that I stayed with him, anyway.

…because my sexual orientation has been dissected, ridiculed, picked apart, and even been deemed imaginary or non-existent, since I was outed in high school.

…because not all of that came from straight people.

…because a high school guidance counselor told me that I shouldn’t be “shoving it (my sexual orientation) in everybody’s faces, when I spoke to her about the bullying.

…because I was quietly steered away from the hobbies and careers I wanted, when I was young, because of my gender.

…because my childhood religion taught me both that I was the source of all evil, and that my only legitimate purposes on this planet were to make babies and take care of them. And men. To take care of men.

…because my emotions, even when their expression is both logical and appropriate to the situation, are often used to discredit my words. I am neither hysterical nor oversensitive.

…because I had an easier time getting booze at the liquor store, when I was a teenager, than I did getting birth control.

…because I grew up believing that women weren’t supposed to enjoy sex.

…because all the heroes in my books, movies, and TV shows were men and boys, beyond Nancy Drew.

…because I was taught all about all the things I was supposed to do to keep myself from being raped, without ever hearing a thing about consent.

…because my male friends and cousins were never taught not to touch me, if I said no.

…because I was never taught how to set boundaries, or even that I was allowed to do so. In fact, I was made to accept kisses, hugs, cheek-pinches, and to sit in someone’s lap, even when I’d said I didn’t want to do so.

…because parents are still forcing their kids to accept touches and physical affection from people who make them uncomfortable.

…because, until I was in my late twenties, I believed that if I “led a man on” to a certain point, I owed him sex.

…because girls – and more importantly, boys – are still being taught that lie.

…because too many people believe they are entitled to my attention, time, respect, affection, body, and intimacy.

…because girls are still made to choose their clothes for school based upon whether or not the boys might find them “distracting.”

…because the vast majority of legislators making policy and funding decisions about women’s health in the US are male.

…because I’m afraid to post face or full-body pictures of myself online, due to the possible commentary.

…because my clothing does not indicate consent

…because my alcohol consumption doesn’t, either.

…because one in five women will be raped in her lifetime.

…because 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys are molested as children

…because our country provides those child victims with neither justice nor adequate treatment for their trauma.

…because a child victim of sexual abuse is almost twice as likely to be sexually assaulted or raped, later in life, as someone who was not molested as a child, yet there is no ongoing support system.

…because children almost never lie about sexual abuse, yet are rarely believed.

…because women almost never lie about rape, yet are rarely believed.

…because police officers often interrogate reporting rape victims as if they were the criminals…

…and only about 3% of rapists ever see the inside of a prison cell…

…and victims are revictimized by the court system, during trials…

…and by their communities…

…and by the media…

…yet too many people, when told by a woman that she was raped, refuse to believe her unless she goes to the police.

…because people like RooshV and Donald Trump exist.

And that’s all I’ve got the spoons to type, right now. I’ve barely scratched the surface, and I will be back.

Also for those who don’t know, I was molested by my stepfather from about six months after his marriage to my mother, until I was sixteen. That experience soured a metric fuckton of other experiences, for me, spoiled a lot of things I once enjoyed, or might one day come to enjoy. Those things ran the gamut, from sex to certain books, from television shows to relationships.

I’ve done so much work, extremely difficult work, over the last twenty years, to overcome all those insidious little landmines. To overcome the shame I felt around sex, in general, and the somewhat contradictory but ever-present feeling that I was only worthy as a sex object. To finally lay claim to my own sexuality, and my enjoyment of sex, while understanding that I had value, as a person, without it. To not feel afraid of every touch, to be able to be assertive, to communicate my needs. Hell, to communicate at all, outside passive-aggressive co-dependence. Simply learning enough to understand what was done to me, what was taken from me, and why so many of the effects lingered on for so long, in such weird ways, has been and remains the work of a lifetime.

I haven’t moved beyond all the triggers, yet. I imagine there are some that may never go away. I experience the fight-or-flight instinct, whenever I hear someone pronounce the word wash as “worsch.” Every muscle in my body tenses up, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up, whenever I hear anyone whistling an actual tune, especially if they do those little vibrato trills. The sight of an L. Ron Hubbard book can make me vomit. I am actually less comfortable in a crop top than I am naked. I think of him Every. Single. Time. I walk into a shopping mall.

And I get very uncomfortable at just the thought of watching what was once one of my favorite television shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation. See, he used to call me into his room to watch reruns. He’d harass me ceaselessly, if I refused. After a while, I stopped sitting on the bed, because I couldn’t get far enough away from him. Instead, I started sitting on the cold hardwood floor at the foot of the bed, between the bed and the TV, where I could see enough of his reflection to be able to tell if he was making a move towards me. Still, though, he managed to make scars that stick around, even now. He’d start a conversation, during which he’d get me to turn around and look at him, to mimic a facial expression, or show me a distance with his hands. Sometimes, that’s all it was. Usually until I’d let my guard down, and stopped expecting badness. Then, he’d get me to turn and look at him, and he’d have the leg of his shorts hiked up far enough to have his penis hanging out. It was the first naked penis I’d seen, aside from changing diapers when I was babysitting. It terrified me.

See, I knew next to nothing about sex. What I knew was rumor and gossip from the girls’ locker room, and all of it was at least misleading. Whatever boys did with those…things… I didn’t want any part of it, if they looked like that.

Once I figured out what the sex thing was all about, in the midst of his years-long campaign of touching me, exposing himself, trying to catch me naked, offering me money for sex acts, and just generally harassing me, I became afraid he was going to rape me. I didn’t want to lose my virginity to him, so I found some boy who seemed nice enough, and gave it to him, by choice. Just so it could be mine. I was fourteen. All of this was inextricably tied to TNG.

But it was a wonderful show, and I miss it. Maybe that’s silly, but there’s this defiant piece of whatever it is that makes me, me, which refuses to let him forever ruin something that I once found so enjoyable. I’ve reclaimed so many other things, battled to the death of so many other triggers, but he still has this stupid, mostly meaningless power over me, the power to soil some part of my present, with what he did in my past.

Someone on another site asked why so many people were so down on Fifty Shades. This was my answer, and the reason why I urge everyoneto not spend any money supporting the books, or the upcoming movies.

(Trigger warnings all around for stalking, rape, and domestic violence. Please do not read this if such discussions upset you.)

I’ve been actively kinky for over a decade. Actively involved in the BDSM community. I had one Dom/sub relationship, in which I was the sub, that lasted over 7 years. Following that, I was in an abusive relationship that masqueraded as a D/s dynamic, for almost a year. I’m in another healthy D/s relationship, now, and a vocal feminist and advocate for consent, so I think I’m at least decently qualified to explain the difference between healthy BDSM and domestic/partner abuse.

The difference is informed, ONGOING, enthusiastic consent.

As a feminist, I believe that the only way it is okay for a woman to be subjugated in any way by a man is if she chooses to do so, from a place of empowerment and knowledge.

That is absolutely NOT what is portrayed in the books… and yes, I’ve reluctantly trudged through reading all three. So, I will tell you why it is glorifying abuse, and how that is insulting to me, personally, as a feminist, as a woman, and as a submissive in a D/s dynamic.

1. Christian isn’t a romantic. He’s a stalker. His being rich and handsome doesn’t change that. Without asking her outright for the information, he uses his sooper-dooper-sekrit ring of wealthy acquaintances to find out where she works, and when she would be on the clock, and just… shows up there. Three hours away from his home. To buy ROPE and ZIP TIES.

A tailor-made kidnapping kit. Because that’s not creepy at all.

2. He’s a jealous, power-mad control freak, which he freely admits in their first meeting, and demonstrates in an admirably despicable fashion during his little kidnapping preparation trip. At this point, he and Ana barely know one another, yet the mere implication that some other dude may have some importance in her life, even just as a friend, already infuriates him. HUGE red flag. Healthy, secure men – hell, healthy, secure people, do NOT freak out if someone they barely know has a conversation with someone else – of any gender. PERIOD. It’s not sexy, it’s fucking dangerous.

He stalks her again when she’s at the bar, by tracing her cell phone, and shows up, ordering her around. That wasn’t a rescue, folks. It was a territory-marking pissing contest. Again, not a thing that healthy adults do.

He practically threatens her when she takes a phone call from a male friend. He tries to control her visits with her family, what she wears, what she eats, when she sleeps. And SHE HAD NOT CONSENTED TO THIS. Which brings me to…

3. Consent. THERE ISN’T ANY. One, she never signs the ridiculous contract. Two, she isn’t well enough informed to give informed consent. Three, he is manipulating her from the very beginning. Four, there’s a HUGE power imbalance between the two of them. He’s older, much more sexually experienced, much more experienced with (his fucked up version of) s&m, rich, powerful, and persuasive. Decent people who have that much power do not use it to manipulate, deceive, and control people who don’t. You know who does? Sociopaths.

4. RAPE. Yeah. That’s right. I said it. He rapes her. She is actively telling him no. And he threatens to tie her down, if she fights. He’s bigger, stronger, and more powerful in every way, and she’s already revealed that she’s terrified of him, and he’s ignoring her wishes, ignoring her struggles, and RAPING her. Furthermore, EL James has the nerve to portray a very clear rape… then tell her readers that the victim liked it.She should be strung up and beaten within an inch of her talentless life, just for that.

I’ll be honest. What’s known as “rape play,” or consensual non-consent, is a thing that exists. It’s a thing many people, myself included, actually enjoy. But that isn’t what was portrayed in that godawful account. In order for that to be something that is in any way morally defensible or ethically justifiable, both parties have to be on the same page. Something like that has to be discussed at exhaustive lengths. Negotiated. I’ll try to break it down as simply as possible, and give you a hypothetical example.

Let’s say I want to try this with my dominant boyfriend. He needs to know which things are on the table, and which aren’t. I might, for instance, be fine with him slapping my face with an open hand, but not punching me. I might be okay with him putting a blindfold over my eyes, but not a hood over my whole face. I might want him to ignore it if I say “no,” but that would mean I’d need a safeword that actually means stop, and does NOT get ignored. We need to discuss possible triggers this might set off, and what I might need from him, in order to handle them, afterwards… or vice versa. He might be triggered by it, too, and need comfort from me, after. After all, this is a deep dark thing to do with anyone, and he loves me. As a decent human being, he might very well struggle with feelings of guilt and worry and shame, even if he knows I wanted it.

Christian does nothing of the sort with Ana. What he does to her is actual, prosecute-able, first degree rape, in all fifty states. Inexcusable, and horrifying – in context or out.

He bullies her into the relationship, all the while warning her against it. Which, if you ask professionals, is one hallmark behavior of a sociopath. One of their favorite manipulation tools. A thing abusers do, in order to suck in their victims.

Outside of my utter outrage at EL James for totally, unabashedly, horrific accounts of abuse and rape, disguised as BDSM, I hated the books for many other reasons.

As a feminist, I am just disgusted by her portrayal of every woman in the story. Ana is a flighty, ignorant, naive, deliberately helpless, indecisive, flaky, little prat, with no self esteem, who is completely out of touch with her own sexuality, her own better instincts, and just plain common fucking sense. Christian’s ex-mistress is a pedophile, and a manipulative, controlling ice queen. His former submissive is completely crazy, mentally and emotionally incapable of functioning without this man in her life, telling her what to do. Ana’s BFF is almost a non-person, as are most other female characters. They all seem to need men to take care of business for them, in one way or another. You can practically hear the Scarlett O’Hara Fiddle-dee-dee of the damned early 20th century, before women could even vote, in every single description, speech, or dialogue.

As a writer… oh, holy hell. It’s hard to even know where to begin, it’s so terrible. First of all, Twilight was pretty awful. Of course, Twilight was written with preteens in mind. 50 Shades is openly nothing more than a shoddyTwilight fanfic. And the writing is even worse than Stephanie Meyer’s Mormon Vampire Tales. I swear to all things sacred and good, if I ever have to read one more Holy crap!, one more inner goddess, one more improper use of the word subconscious, I am going to puke up every meal I’ve eaten in the last eight months, all over Ana’s Inner Goddess.

As a reader of erotica, I am beyond underwhelmed. I’m whatever is under underwhelmed. No adult woman should, during a sexual encounter, refer to her vajayjay as down there. And does anybody actually call their hooha, their sex? James may as well have actually written vajayjay and hooha, coochie and vagoo. And that goes double for the descriptions of Christian’s throbbing meat hammer, which is referred to as his erection, his manhood. I’m sorry, but when I read smut, I want to hear about cocks and cunts, dicks and pussies. I don’t want some pseudo-clinical, dry-as-a-bone (pun intended), watered-down language that sucks (pun still intended) all the sexy right out of the sex. She made it sound like some fucked up story for kids. Richard Scary’s Trip to the Family Planning Center, or Dr. Seuss’s Better Beware of the Weather Down There.

As a kinky person, a member of the BDSM community, I am just pissed off. She makes it seem as though the only way anyone would have a desire to engage in kink would be if they were fucked up. Crazy. Mentally ill. This is both a blatant falsehood and a disservice to mentally ill people (as if mental illness wasn’t already stigmatized enough). Kink does not equal abuse, but her books make them seem the same. And mental illness isn’t fucked up-ness. It’s a thing 95% of us will experience, at some point in our lives.

As I mentioned above, engaging in kink requires informed, ongoing, enthusiastic consent from all parties involved. Do some assholes, abusers, and predators abuse people, under the guise of kink? Of course they do. There are dangerous assholes in every subculture. Just ask the Pope. But that’s still abuse. Calling it BDSM doesn’t make it so. Kinky people aren’t fifty shades of fucked up; they’re just aroused by different things. There are ethical ways to engage in that, and it’s irresponsible not to make that distinction, when so many vanilla soccer moms are now clamoring for their very own GrandMasterHighPoobahOfPain. If someone hits you without your consent, it’s assault and battery. If someone penetrates you without your consent, that’s rape. Legally. Literally. Everywhere.

So, there you go. The relationship portrayed is physically, mentally, sexually, financially, and psychologically abusive,by definition. The writing is inexcusably bad. And kink isn’t really like that.

Does that harsh some folks’ lady-boners? I’m sure it does. Sorrynotsorry. There’s much better smut out there, and a ton of it is written without glorifying abuse. In a time when women in the US are having to fight for the reproductive freedoms that were already won, we shouldn’t be giving this sort of thing any kind of financial support.

I urge you, instead of spending your money on such trash, to rent a decent movie, and donate the money you save to a domestic violence organization of your choice. And if you’re just hard-up for wank material, hit me up. I’ll point you in the direction of some erotica that will have your inner goddess saying much more raunchy things than Holy crap.

Let me tell you about
the power
in a word
because the word
IS
a problem
just not the way
you mean it

The word
is a problem
because it does not travel
alone
or arrive
with courtesy
because it doesn’t always
give forewarning
before
it brings in all its baggage
before
it rips you back through
memory’s door
puts you in that flesh again
in that fear again
in that shame again
in that moment
when you
became a vessel
and nothing more

Back
to that moment
when some small
desperate piece
of your mind,
insistent,
whisperedBut II am moreI am more than this
to the next moment
when you shushed it
gagged it
strangled it
killed it off
in order to fucking survive
when they made you
a sin eater
to carry all the fucking guilt
and the shame
and the pain
of the wrong
for the rest of your days
because you know
he never will
and no matter
what pretty lies
you tell others
or tell yourself
that small dead part of you
which insisted
it was more
will haunt you with guilt
and shame
in the quiet of those infinite
sleepless nights
for always

Because once you know
that word
once you really
get acquainted with it
once it’s pushing
into your mind
every time
he
looks at you
across the baked chicken
and mashed potatoes
in the way he ought only
to look at your mother
as he sits
right beside her
and she pretends
not to see
and you know
that it could be coming
you know
that there is
not enough vigilance
in a whole fucking army
to keep him from being
the first
if he wants to
because he is patient
and will wait
for his optimal moment
like a hyena waiting
hunched over and drooling
in tall grass

So you make the decision
at fourteen
years
old
to keep that one small bit
to lay claim to
that one experience
to have that one piece
be yours
your choice
to steal away his chance
by giving what’s left
of your innocence
to the boy who looked
like Kurt Cobain
but cleaner
to the boy
you didn’t love
but who had a dimple
in his chin
and the name of a
famous funk singer
and the boy
treated you
with kindness
with gentleness
and awkward
fumbling sweetness
but all you could think
the whole time
wasHA!Hedoesn’t get to takethis part from metoo…

Not realizing that
is exactly what happened

Once that word is pushing
into you
on heavy
humid
waves
of burrito-scented breath
and the smell of Cool Water
against a cheap bed
with a broken spring
while you lie
still as you can
still as you can
addled by booze
and maybe a little
something extra in the solo cup
lie as still as you can
and wait
for it all to just
be over for them all
to have their turn
because when
you tried to run
naked
out the door
three of them
pulled you back in
and the sound
of the door closing
was the sound of
you
fifteen
giving up
pretending to like it
so they wouldn’t hurt
anymore

and later
your best friend
and her friend
beat you
in a convenience store
parking lot
for not protecting her
from the same fate
while it was happening
to you…

Once that fucking word is pushing
into you
on a dark gravel road
while your nose
bleeds into the dirty
bed of the pickup truck
tailgate biting into your hips
and you’re saying no
no
no
no
no
no
no
with every thrust
until the word no
loses all meaning
and becomes just a
strange heavy shape
on your tongue
rolling out
like a boulder
but landing like
air against stone
and the one
who was your friend
acts all magnanimous
when he finally
hears the litany
of negation
and pulls out
of your ass
and
without pausing
pushes into
your other hole
with a, There.Is that better?
and keeps on
plowing away as if
the continuing no
was just an
expected noise
that comes with each thrust
and you’re thinking
you’re thinking
the strangest things
like how
will you ever
get the blood
out of that skirt
before your grandmother
sees you
how will you ever
sneak your swollen face
and your shame
past her wakefulness
and why
is it so dark out here
and suddenly
there’s nothing
blissful oblivion
until you’re walking
dazed
bloody and alone
down a street
in the three a.m. dead
of a small southern town
and you stumble
the miles
to your car
in the dark
hoping against hope
that no one sees you
that no one knows…

Once that word is pushing
into you
in your home
in your bed
because he finally
got fed up
with all the no
no
no
and threatened
not to pay the power bill
while your baby girl slept
just down the hall
so you rolled over
and you stared at the
incidental faces
made by the
cheap
fake grain
of the cheap
fake paneling
you surrendered
with an insult
because it was all
the dignity
you could manage to preserve
to sayFineFineWhatever.but do it from behindbecause I’m watching TV

and you never
call it what it was
because you can’t
you never
call it what it was
because there’s too much
hanging on it
because the escape
and the education
the scholarship
the full ride
that disappeared
five weeks later
in a stream of piss
and two pink lines
became a child
a child
whom you love more than life
and you know
deep in your dark places
you know without a moment’s doubt
you have to hide that word
hide that truth
until you love that small
helpless thing
with the fierceness of a bear
protecting its cub
so you bury that word
you bury it deep
under years of denial
and decades of less than
and you love that boy
you love him
you love that boy
who looks
so very much
like his father…

Because once you know
that word
once you really
get acquainted with it
then you know
that the word
is legion
like that demon
containing multitudes
containing memories
memories you would rather
not possess
containing you
containing others like you
behind walls of
should have could have
why-didn’t-you
changing everything
irrevocable
making of you
nothing more than a vessel
no matter how much
that small voice
insists it isn’t so

Once you know
that word
you know the just world
is a shit-stained fantasy
and that the people who deserve
good things
sometimes get bad
while those who deserve
badness
take whatever the fuck they want
by whatever means they must
but as long as we
call it by
some other name
they don’t have to feel bad
they don’t have to carry
that shame
that guilt
that knowing

So

Yes

That word is a problem
but not in the way you think
and I will be damned
if I will sugar-coat it
with some euphemism
to make it easier
on the ones who want to say
that it wasn’t what it was
– if I was drinking
if I gave in
to keep the heat on
for my kid
if I went to that party
or wore that dress
or let him kiss me
or stayed with him after
or had his child –
I won’t call it something
other than what it was
to make it
more palatable
to those who want to claim
they did not know better
because they once believed
they were entitled
to my body
my agency
and my silence

Because why
should the power of the word
only ever be
felt
by those who-
like me-
really got
acquainted with it?

Why
is the word
only a problem
when it makes those who
don’t know that shame
who may not
back then
have known
but left us with the after
anyway
who don’t want to see
that the things they may have done
back before they knew
fit the definition
why is it only a problem
when they
feel uncomfortable
in their complacence
or complicity?

I will call it
by its goddamn NAME
until it’s a problem
that everyone
understands
that no one
denies

Until the ones who do it
are the ones who
carry the shame
instead of those of us
who carry it now.

Shame is an emotion with which we become familiar at a very young age. It’s used as a tool, in everything from parenting to education to employment to business to healthcare to social media.

A small child learns about a parent’s displeasure, and begins to associate the language, tone, and nonverbal language of disappointment or condemnation with (hopefully) maladaptive or dangerous or unhealthy behaviors.

School-age children are shamed for their antisocial or dangerous or disruptive behavior every day. Names are written on the board, or behavior cards are “turned” from green to yellow to red, as publicly visible indicators of whether or not the children have been well behaved.

Employers will often post notices, or send out memos, naming the people who, for instance, haven’t completed their work by a specified deadline.

Businesses post signs that draw attention to impolite customers who talk on their cell-phones while conducting transactions, and employees are told to ask offenders, in front of other customers, to step out of line until they’ve finished their conversations.

In each of these cases, shame serves a purpose, both to the individuals, and to the social groups in which the shaming takes place. Individuals learn about unacceptable behaviors, and that engaging in those behaviors can lead to scrutiny and discomfort. The social groups benefit when the individuals behave in the ways that are most beneficial to the group, as a whole.

Of course, that isn’t the only way shame is utilized. It is all too often treated as a weapon. Slut shaming implies that women who enjoy their own sexuality, on their own terms, are somehow dirty, immoral, and lewd. Body shaming plays on the insecurities of other people, with digs at their worth as humans, based on some physical characteristics.

And, of course, there’s victim shaming. This is a form of weaponized shame that targets people who have already been harmed by the behaviors of others, based on a nebulous and unconquerable list of dos and dont’s, shoulds and shouldn’ts, and personal strategies generalized to entire populations. It comes in so many different flavors, it puts Baskin-Robbins to… well… shame.

At its base, victim-shaming is placing the onus for feeling bad about what was done on the person who was acted on, rather than the person acting.

As they are the most common target (or, at least, the most commonly targeted victims I’ve seen), all of my examples will be focused on abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, or rape victims. Also, I will be using gender-specific pronouns. This does not mean that I believe that onlywomen are victims of rape, abuse, or victim shaming, or that only men are rapists or abusers, or that people who identify with something other than binary gender roles cannot be either, and is only used for the sake of (relative) brevity (HA!) and simplicity.

She wore something that exposed too much skin.

She was walking alone at night.

She was walking alone during the day.

She was in a bad neighborhood.

She was in a frat house.

She was in a dance club.

She was at a bar.

She didn’t practice the buddy system.

She had too much to drink.

She was in a relationship with an obviously bad person (because “good” people don’t do these things, and it’s really easy to tell the difference without long-term acquaintance).

She was too dependent on him.

She was too independent, which threatened his masculinity.

She was too meek, and let him walk all over her.

She was too outspoken, which was antagonizing to him.

She presented a front of a happy partner/spouse to everyone else.

She complained too much to everyone else about the relationship.

She smiled at him, which means she was giving off the wrong signals.

She didn’t smile at him, which means she was being rude.

She was too friendly with him.

She wasn’t friendly enough.

She rejected him.

She didn’t overtly, or explicitly, reject him.

She didn’t leave after the abuse started.

She tried to leave, and it made him angry.

She allowed herself to be alone with him.

She didn’t explicitly say “no.”

She didn’t say “no” loud enough.

She didn’t physically fight him off.

She didn’t physically fight hard enough.

She didn’t learn self defense, beforehand.

She antagonized him into escalating the violence, by fighting back.

She didn’t have pepper spray, a taser, or a gun in her handbag.

She shouldn’t have been carrying a weapon he could take away and use against her.

She didn’t report the abuse/rape to law enforcement.

She didn’t report the abuse/rape soon enough.

She didn’t get the precise timeline and/or every detail letter perfect, in the midst of processing the trauma, so…

She was exaggerating/lying when she reported to law enforcement.

She didn’t cry or seem visibly distressed when discussing the abuse/rape.

She was overly dramatic/overly emotional when she discussed the abuse/rape.

She got over it too fast.

She didn’t get over it fast enough.

She didn’t process it the way x person thought she should.

She refused to share details with uninvolved people.

She aired too much dirty laundry.

She won’t shut up about what happened.

She won’t talk about what happened.

She won’t shut up about the other people who are suffering the way she did.

She doesn’t do enough to protect other possible victims.

She’s focusing too much on the people who do bad things to others.

She won’t move on with her life.

She’s a “perpetual victim.”

Whew. That was depressing to type. And exhausting, both mentally and emotionally. What’s worse, that is by no means a comprehensive list of all the shaming tactics that victims of abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, or rape routinely face. Personally, I don’t know a single survivor who hasn’t faced at least a half dozen of them.

As a reminder, all of those are tactics used to shame the person who was ACTED ON, rather than the person who acted.

As a culture, we expend an awful lot of effort and energy on these types of things. Why? How do we, individually or as a culture/subculture, benefit from them?

We don’t. Go back through that list. As you read each of the things listed, as yourself three questions:

1) How does this other person doing this thing, in response to being victimized, impact the quality of my life?

2) How does this other person doing this thing, in response to being victimized, impact the safety of the social group/subculture I share with them?
3) Am I, or is that social group, harmed or made less safe in any way that is actually the fault of either the person who was victimized, their behavior before/during the assault/rape/abuse, or their response to it?

If we’re being honest with ourselves, the answer, across the board, is a resounding NO.

Yet we continue to shame them.

Now, ask yourself if your social group or subculture is harmed, or made less safe, by the rapist, the abuser, the harasser, or the perpetrator of sexual assault. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

So, instead of shaming the victims, why are we not shaming the people who acted on them? Why are we not shaming the behaviors that actually cause harm? Why are we so very hesitant to call out the harmful behaviors, and the bits and pieces of our culture which contribute to them? Why is there so very much pushback against that kind of shaming, and so very little against the rampant victim-shaming?

Of course, some of us are. Some of us are trying very hard to tilt the balance in that direction. And we face an awful lot of criticism and anger and shouting and pontificating and name-calling, and, yes, even shaming, for doing so.

Again… why?

I think it has to do, mostly, with fear.

Fear is not a rational emotion. It is instinctive, and often illogical, especially when we’re not discussing immediate physical threats to our own individual well-being.

I think, perhaps, that there are two types of fear that contribute to this shame-the-victim-but-never-the-perpetrator ethos.

One is the quite understandable fear of becoming victims, ourselves. It’s understandable, because it’s a very real threat. The problem isn’t that we’re afraid of being victimized, it’s the way we are responding to that fear. We’re responding by telling ourselves that there are things we can do, or avoid doing, that will render us invincible to becoming victims, or becoming victims again, in some cases. We want to believe that we have the ultimate power to keep other people from doing bad things to us, so we convince ourselves that this is true.

We convince ourselves that if we follow a list of dos and don’ts, if we are “resilient” enough, if we simply choose not to be victims, then we won’t be. We convince ourselves that we are, therefore, enlightened, and more protected, than those “perpetual victims” who don’t think like we do. We convince ourselves that some combination of behaviors and attitudes can work as an incantation to ward off the evils of the world.

Unfortunately, that isn’t true. Unfortunately, there is NOTHING we can do, individually, that will make us invincible to others who want, or do not know better than to cause us harm. No amount of resilience or confidence or preparation or prevention can change that.

The flip-side of that fear is the fear that we might, ourselves, whether intentionally or through ignorance, cause or have caused that kind of harm in others. That our behavior, somewhere along the line, may have crossed the line. That other people may see us as rapists, abusers, violators. That we might have to see ourselves that way. And this is terrifying, to most of us. The idea that we might “be that guy,” even though, perhaps, we never intended to be.

This fear leads to a knee-jerk defensiveness and denial which, while understandable, is entirely counterproductive, and even childish. It’s the train of thought that says, I once had sex with a woman who was incapacitated. Only bad people rape. I’m not a bad person, therefore having sex with incapacitated people isn’t rape.

Because it’s easier to deny that a thing is wrong, emotionally, than it is to admit we may have done a wrong thing.

Because there’s a false association going on, that only “bad people” can do “bad things,” and that line of thought just doesn’t line up with reality. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. We all learn some busted things, at some point. We all keep learning, I hope, throughout our lives. Sometimes, we learn that the things we once learned were wrong, or flawed in some way. The appropriate response to that is not to deny the wrongness of what we once understood, in order to alleviate ourselves from guilt or shame. It is to learn from it, and grow, and become better human beings. People who don’t do the things we now understand to not be okay, even if we didn’t understand it, before.

And a part of that shift is shifting the shame. Instead of shaming victims, or their behaviors, or even shaming people, we need to be shaming the behaviors that are causing harm. The dehumanization of women and transpeople and people of non-binary gender. The marginalization of those who are “different,” whether that difference is race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, economic status, or some other thing altogether. The levels of culturally accepted aggression towards those people. The idea that the onus for halting any interpersonal contact is on the person being acted on, instead of the personacting. Victim blaming, silencing, and shaming. Brushing abusive behavior under the rug. Excusing or enabling abuses to continue. All of those behaviors are shame-worthy.

Being victimized is not.

It is far past time for us – ALL of us – to shift the shame to where it belongs.

When I was a small child, I was surrounded by extended family, and family friends. My parents pretty much sucked at being parents, but they did keep us involved with all of our relatives.

There were Sunday dinners, and summer cookouts, picnics and gatherings, or just a bunch of the neighborhood kids running wild in the woods around the holler.

And everywhere we went, there were things that took away our agency.

That old lady that wanted to pinch your cheeks? It was rude not to let her, not to smile, while she did it, not to thank her for compliments that felt… greasy.

That other old lady who gave kisses that left a snail-trail of doublemint-scented slime on your cheek when she kissed you? Same thing. Smiles, gratitude, not pulling away. Waiting to wipe the ooze off your face until you could get into another room.

That creepy old great uncle or older fourth cousin who always wanted to pull you up on his lap, and tell you long, involved, boring-yet-slightly-creepy tales about his first love, and how much you remind him of her? Yeah. You get the picture.

That cousin who bullied you relentlessly when out of visual range of the adults, but patted you condescendingly on the head, and gave you rib-crushing hugs when they were around? Even him. And he knew the rules, knew you couldn’t get away without being chastised. He took advantage of it on purpose.

From my earliest memories, I was being taught that my comfort didn’t matter. That people, grown-ups and bullies, could invade my personal space, touch me in uncomfortable ways, give me all kinds of sleazy, slimy, or threatened feelings, and that it was my job to not only stand there and take it, but to smile about it. To say thank you. To pretend that it was not only okay, but that I wanted it.

I’ve talked to loads of other people who were raised the same way. It seems that, though boys weren’t entirely immune, especially from the cheek-pinching aunt, most of the folks I know who experienced this were girls. It was part of teaching us how to be proper ladies. Demure. Acquiescent. Pleasing. Polite.

No one ever made the distinction, for me, between those uncomfortable touches and kisses and hugs, and the ones I was supposed to repel. Except for strangers. Especially strangers asking directions, or for help with a lost dog, or handing out candy. Yet the very same people who would insist that politeness required allowing people to touch me when I didn’t want to, tend to be the types of people who blame victims when they don’t fight back enough, don’t say “no” in just the right ways to count as a clear denial of consent.

So, when my stepfather, who was obviously in the class of people to whom I wasn’t to say no, started touching me in ways that made me uncomfortable, I did precisely what I’d been taught. I was only eleven, and my fondest wish was to be a good girl. To do what I was supposed to do, enough for everyone to love me. That was my sole purpose for existing, as far as I knew.

It took me two years to figure out he shouldn’t be touching me like that. Shouldn’t be exposing himself to me. That he was the bad guy, and not me, for him “sharing” his Penthouse Forums, because he knew how mature I was, and how much I loved to read.

It took me another three years, after that realization, to be able to speak up, to stop what was happening. And in light of my upbringing, I wasn’t really all that surprised by what happened next.

My mother and stepfather, when they weren’t busy denying it altogether, blamed me.

They said, “Well, if he did do anything, it must have been her fault. You know how she walks around the house in nothing but an oversized T-shirt and panties. You know how she flirts with every male in sight.”

My uncle even agreed to say I’d made a pass at him, in court, to try to save my stepfather’s reputation.

All of this just reinforced everything I’d been taught. My boundaries didn’t matter. As long as I kept up the appearance of purity, no one cared if someone else was doing things to me that I didn’t want.

And it took much, much longer for that lesson to be un-learned. Even when I thought I was past all that, somehow above it, there were times that it reared its ugly head.

The time that guy kept bugging me to play, and I kept trying to tell him no, but in a ‘nice’ way, even though he wasn’t taking my polite no for an answer. Even when he was pointedly and purposefully trying to talk me out of my no, like I was wrong for saying it. Like I needed it to be justified.

The time that my now-ex-husband told me he’d leave me if I so much as cringed when he tried to fuck me, less than a month after a brutal rape.

The myriad occasions when someone touched me without consent, and I just let it pass, to avoid making a scene.

That creepy douche who kept scooting closer and closer to me at a munch, pinning me to the wall on the inside of the booth.

It isn’t an easy thing to overcome. Many of us are steeped in that shit from the time we’re born. And if you weren’t? You just can’t possibly understand the pervasiveness of it. The way it seeps into interactions without you even knowing it’s there. The way it keeps trying to come back, no matter how many times you think you’ve killed it off.

All of this is a huge part of the reason why the concept of “enthusiastic consent,” or whatever other emphatic word you want to use, is so important. It’s another reason why “no means no” is not enough, and “only yes means yes,” has become such an important distinction.

Is it on me to overcome my conditioning? Sure it is. And I own that. I am responsible for un-learning this busted lesson.

As ethical people, though, it’s on every single one of us to be aware that this happens. It happens to a lot of us. And it might impede our ability to speak out, when we need to say no, sometimes. It’s everyone’s job to understand that, and to work towards better communication, and providing a place where the person saying “no,” knows that their no will be heard and respected.

So, my thought is, maybe we could work at this from both sides. Maybe we could stop making it a win-lose situation, and get on board with trying, instead, to understand and aid one another in becoming better communicators. Maybe we can start making sure that our partners know that we want to hear their “no,” if they need to say it, and that we will respect it. That we won’t try to push past it. That we will be grateful for them defining their boundaries, so that we’re not in danger of pushing past them accidentally. Maybe we can learn to take no for an answer, without demanding explanations, without arguing against it, without trying to nullify and push past it for our own gratification. Maybe we can start asking, if we aren’t absolutely certain, or if body language or verbal cues indicate doubt.

It’s not about blaming either person involved. It is about working together to understand why sometimes, “Just say ‘no,'” isn’t setting the bar high enough.